Tag: human rights

By Jacqueline Bhabha and Mary T. Bassett The United States continues to pull ahead in a xenophobic race to the bottom, making fear and trauma central to its border control toolkit. The list is long: Executive orders purporting to ban Muslims, slashing refugee admission quotas, reversing well-established legal precedent protecting the right to asylum of rape and domestic violence survivors, the willful fueling of deportation fear among law-abiding residents, and…

A new International Organization for Migration (IOM) report released today takes a closer look at the deaths and disappearances of migrants around the world. “Fatal Journeys: Volume 4” focuses on missing migrant children. According to IOM data, nearly 1,600 children have been reported dead or missing since 2014 – a likely undercount. Although it is well known that children are one of the most vulnerable groups of migrants, data on…

One in One Hundred: Drivers of Success and Resilience among College-Educated Romani Adolescents in Serbia New report on factors for success among Romani college students challenges the narrative of Roma indifference to education For immediate release: December 20, 2018 One of the major factors in whether Roma adolescents continue on to university is if they have significant support from a non-Roma teacher or peer in combatting everyday racism in school,…

In honor of 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) invite you to a film screening of “On Her Shoulders” which explores the activism of 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad. The film follows the life and activism of Nadia Murad who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, just after…

Dr. Yüksel is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and former Director of the Psychosocial Trauma Program at the School of Medicine, University of Istanbul. She is also a founding member of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Her clinical work and research have spanned the treatment of sexual and physical violence survivors, torture survivors, mass violence survivors and transgender persons and their families. In this presentation, Dr. Yüksel will discuss…

This event in the Brown Bag Seminar Series, sponsored by the Harvard Chan Department of Global Health and Population, features Dr. Satchit Balsari, assistant professor in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard FXB Fellow. In India, as around the world, there is vast excitement about the power of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in advancing healthcare delivery. And yet, the vast majority…

Northeastern University School of Law Event – Rethinking Borders: Climate Change, Migration, and Human Rights Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, will be the keynote speaker (11:45am – 1:15pm) at this all-day event,”Rethinking Borders: Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights.” Sponsored by the Northeastern University Law Review in this year’s symposium, the participants…

Dr. Laura Cordisco Tsai, PhD, MSSW Carr Center Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School WIPs are an opportunity for researchers to share their work while it is still in formulation. A WIP generally starts with a formal presentation, followed by a lively question-and-answer period. The series is open to all Harvard affiliates. If you are a member of the general public, please email Lena Ransohoff a few days in advance.

Photo: Cover, Romeo Oriogun’s book, Burnt Men; photo by Chibuihe-Light Obi Oluwasegun Romeo Oriogun, Nigerian poet, Artist Protection Fund & SAR Fellow In Nigeria to be Queer and vocal means to live in danger, as society forces to conform to what it knows as normalcy which in reality is a remnant of colonization. There is no safe space and Queer people are arrested, lynched and in some cases burnt to…

In March 2018, researchers from Harvard FXB and BRAC (the Bangladeshi-based international nongovernmental organization) conducted a rapid assessment household survey among 800 Rohingya and host families in Ukhia and Teknaf in the District of Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh, on the border of Myanmar. Preliminary results are available here. The study underscored the alarmingly low levels of vaccination among the Rohingya in Myanmar, the high mortality rate among young men…

Harvard Book Store welcomes renowned human rights lawyer and Harvard scholar and professor JACQUELINE BHABHA (and FXB research director) for a discussion of her latest book, Can We Solve the Migration Crisis?. About Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? Every minute 24 people are forced to leave their homes and over 65 million are currently displaced worldwide. Small wonder that tackling the refugee and migration crisis has become a global…

Separation at the border On June 27, our colleague Chris Sweeney in the Harvard Chan Office of Communications interviewed Harvard FXB’s director of research, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, on family separation for their feature Three Questions. Below is an excerpt from the piece, with one question and answer: In all of your years working on migrant issues around the world, have you ever seen a similar policy enacted? I can’t think…

President Trump introduced a “zero tolerance” immigration policy on April 6, 2018, as a seemingly fail-safe measure to prevent what he calls undesirables from seeking to enter the US across the border with Mexico. He launched the policy to elevate his stature as the defender of an American populace under threat. His account is eerily reminiscent of pronouncements by genocidal regimes dehumanizing targeted groups. Rwandan Hutus described their Tutsi targets…

By Susan Lloyd McGarry This spring semester Harvard FXB has sponsored or convened three events that brought students and Roma scholars together and suggested some possible future directions in the struggle for Roma rights and in Harvard FXB’s Roma research.. Alone Together: Strength and Solidarity Between the Roma and African American Communities—Harvard FXB’s Sixth Annual International Roma Day Event On April 4, a few days before International Roma Day on…

Harvard FXB research director Jacqueline Bhabha recently gave the Rethinking Open Society lecture at the Central European University in Budapest earlier this spring. Below is the first paragraph from CEU’s coverage of her talk: “It is hard to think of a time when public engagement with migration policy globally has been as evident or as polarized as it is now,” said Harvard Professor Jaqueline Bhabha, as she opened her Rethinking…

‘Don’t Hate Migrants’ by Lynne Jones Chiapas, Mexico: Ciudad Hidalgo on the border of Guatemala and Mexico* Sunday April 9, 2017 When I asked the tall woman with the tiny baby why she left El Salvador, she answered in five words: Because they killed my husband. The tiny baby is 27 days old. She holds him close against her chest with a cloth pulled over to protect him from the…

By Margareta Matache, Jacqueline Bhabha, and Andrzej Mirga On March 14, in Fogarasi and Others v. Romania, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) condemned Romanian police officers for their inhuman treatment of a Romani family. According to this highly respected international human rights court, the EU member state’s conduct, as enacted by its law enforcement agents, constituted a breach of Article 3 of the European Convention, which provides that…

By Arlan Fuller Over the past three months, the Myanmar military has led a violent campaign targeting the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and currently shows no signs of relenting. In early October, the government cited an attack on border police as justification for a wide-sweeping offensive targeting men, women and children, with beatings, incinerated homes, systematic rape, and extrajudicial killings. In Myanmar (once known as Burma) on January 20,…

By Krista Oehlke Violence stemming from the drug trade has been surmounting in Mexico for decades, taking an increased toll on civilian communities. In October 2016, Sergio Aguayo, FXB fellow and research professor at the Centro de Estudios Internacionale of the El Colegio de México, released a new report investigating two mass killings in Mexico by the criminal organization known as Los Zetas. In 2010, the drug gang allegedly massacred…

For immediate release: Monday, March 21, 2016 Boston, MA – Labor trafficking is a gross violation that affects hundreds of thousands of Indian children each year. Despite the Indian government’s considerable attention to the problem, the rescue and reintegration apparatus is beset by a range of problems that can leave children at risk of further harm, according to a new report published today by Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health…

To fight Zika we must fight poverty and powerlessness and ensure that women enjoy their rights. by Alicia Ely Yamin Health ministers throughout Latin America have announced they will unite to stop the alarming spread of the Zika virus. Similarly, the World Health Organization has acted with uncharacteristic haste to curb this virus, of which the world presently knows very little. But there is much we do know about containing…

by Karen Feldscher September, 24, 2015 — From July through September this year, up to 30 million people are traveling to the cities of Nashik and Trimbakeshwar in India to bathe in the holy waters of the Godavari River, as part of the Kumbh Mela Hindu religious festival. Amidst this mass gathering—supported by acres and acres of temporary parking lots, police stations, fire stations, health clinics, streetlights and toilets—a small…

July 23, 2015. Harvard FXB, working in partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the World Health Organization, among other key partners, has produced a guide to help health policy makers “effectively and meaningfully implement a human rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health, maternal health and under-5 child health. From the introduction: Health policy makers have an important role to play in contributing to both the…

July 7, 2015. The Social Protection and Human Rights platform promotes awareness of human rights based approaches to social protection. Its aim is to encourage critical thinking about current systems of social protection and to help bridge gaps between policy and practice. Established in 2013, the platform is an initiative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),…

A free nanocourse* on health and human rights will be held at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in July 2015. The short course will focus on the region sometimes referred to as the “Global South”: Latin and South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Most states in the Global South have ratified international human rights treaties that recognize the right to health. However, in practice…

Harvard FXB, by invitation from Open Society Foundations (OSF), has developed the 5th edition of the Health and Human Rights Resource Guide. The Resource Guide has been designed to be a user-friendly, multi-purpose tool in advocating for health and human rights with a wide array of users, including health workers, trainers, program designers, litigators, and policymakers. The Resource Guide covers basic concepts in health and human rights. The introduction provides…